"A
Remembrance of the Past; Building for the Future." ~ Eve
Eckert Koehler

Remembering Our Danube Swabian Ancestors

Lutheranism and the
Danube Swabians

By Henry
Fischer, 2005

It invariably comes as a surprise to most people to
discover that there were Lutherans among the original
Danube Swabians who were part of the first Great Swabian
Migration of the 18th century into Hungary, known as the Schwabenzug.

They were
officially
excluded from
settling in the
newly won
territories
taken from the
Turks, but in
order to secure
settlers the
Emperor Charles
VI was not above
making
concessions with
regard to his
religious policy
when it came to
securing the
kind of
colonists he
wanted even if
they were
Protestants.
He granted
special Letters
Patent providing
for the freedom
to practice
their religion
if settling in
Hungary to those
coming from Hesse, Baden and Württemberg. The vast majority of
these Lutheran settlers arrived in the 1720’s from Hesse
and settled on the Tolna estates of Count von Mercy, the
Governor of the Banat who was at the head of the
colonization movement. It was only through his
intervention that these colonists were able to organize
themselves into congregations and secure pastors and
teachers, because when they arrived in Hungary they
found themselves in the middle of the final phase of the
Counter Reformation.

Their
Letters Patent often proved ineffective, because they
were dependent upon the good graces of the Emperor, and
that could change with the times and the seasons.
There was a sixty year long struggle on the part of the
Lutherans to establish themselves and maintain their own
church life and faith identity in the face of ongoing
persecution, both by the Jesuits and the Hapsburgs,
especially during the reign of Maria Theresia. But
some Mother Churches were able to survive and provided
support to the struggling orphaned and shepherd less
congregations. In particular they were the
congregations in Varsad (the oldest Swabian Lutheran
congregation in the Empire), Kismanyok, Gyönk and the
Reformed congregation in Nagyszekely. With the
Edict of Toleration in 1781 over fifty congregations in
the counties of Tolna, Baranya and Somogy declared
themselves to be Evangelical Lutherans and were legally
allowed to organize themselves and develop their church
life, but with some continuing restrictions placed upon
them.

The vast
majority of the congregations who continued as
“underground churches” did so through the special
ministry of individuals who were variously called
“emergency teachers” or “Levite Lehrer”. They
functioned as illegal schoolmasters, who also led the
congregations in worship and provided some basic
pastoral care including baptism and funerals. They
did not celebrate Holy Communion. This emergency
office in the life of their churches would become the
norm in the future, for those congregations without a
resident pastor, who were associated with a Mother
Church in the area. It was this model of church
life that was brought to Hrastovac and Slavonia by the
Lutheran colonists who came from the area known as
Swabian Turkey that covered the geographical area of the
counties of Tolna, Baranya and Somogy.

Large
scale Lutheran and Reformed emigration into Hungary
occurred during the third Schwabenzug under Joseph II.
These settlements were confined to the future Batschka
and the Banat and they too would become part of the
Church of the Augsburg Confession in Hungary, as the
Lutheran Church was then known.